The Heart Sutra - Two Versions

The void in Buddhist scriptures

Sunyata is a key theme of the Heart Sutra. Sunyata is often understood as "emptiness", but may also be understood differently, as it is in Mahayana scriptures.

Sunyata is a Sanskrit noun derived from 'void'. Over time, many different philosophical schools or tenet-systems developed in order to explain the meaning of sunyata. The exact definition and extent of sunyata varies within the different Buddhist schools of philosophy. In Tibetan Buddhism, detailed dialogues between the perspectives of the various schools are preserved in order to train students.

In the Cittamatra school it is said that the mind itself ultimately exists. In the Tathagatagarbha sutras the Buddha and Nirvana are stated to be real, eternal and filled with inconceivable, enduring virtues. Buddha in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra also indicates that to view everything as empty is an unbalanced approach. The Tibetan version of the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra says that the attainment of nirvanic Liberation ("moksha") opens up a realm of utter bliss, joy, permanence, stability, and eternity" (Dharmakshema "Southern" version).

The Lotus Sutra (chapter 4) states that seeing all phenomena as empty (sunya) is not the highest Buddhic attainment, not the final "gain" or "advantage": the bliss of total Buddha-Wisdom supersedes even the vision of complete "emptiness", and Buddha-Wisdom transcends the perception of emptiness.

The Angulimaliya Sutra explains further that "Liberation is not empty [of existence]" and "Buddha is eternal."

Some others on the Void and Self

According to Dr. Daizetz T. Suzuki (1870-1966), the total self-identity of "I
am I" is the state of non-time and is equivalent to the emptiness of Buddhist philosophy.
[◦Link]

You must have been there during the void to be able to say that you experienced a void. To
be fixed in that 'you' is the quest from start to finish. [. . .] It is the mind that sees
objects and has experiences and that finds a void when it ceases to see and experience, but
that is not 'you'. You are the constant illumination that lights up both the experience and
the void. [. . . Illustration:] In complete darkness we do not see [. . .] and we say: "I see
nothing." In the same way, you are there even in the void you mention. - Ramana Maharsi [Tb 132]

"Many people are afraid to empty their minds lest they should plunge into the Void.
They do not know that their own mind [contains] the Void." [Cf Huang-po: ◦Link]

Dogen [1200-53] says things similar to it:

He denies that sunyata (emptiness), is "nothingness, non-existence, or non-reality."
"Sunyata is not non-existence." In Master Dogen's teaching sunyata is not
the denial of real existence - it expresses the absence of anything other than real
existence." [See Szi, Chapter "Bussho" - and ◦Link]

According to the oldest Pali scriptures Buddha does not say much about self, just a little. The teachings of anatta (non-self) and void seem to have been added in the course of time in some schools of Buddhism. Buddha divided answers to questions into four classes:

Straight yes or no answers;

Analytical answers, defining and qualifying the terms of the question;

Counter-questions;

Those to be put aside, at least for the time being.

John Bullitt of the Access to Insight site says, "Nowhere in the Pali canon does Buddha categorically declare, without qualification, 'There is no self.'" [1]

Buddha also warns against drawing inferences from statements that should not have inferences drawn from them, and advocates drawing inferences from those that should . . . It is also well to remember that relevant Buddhist practice hardly calls for more than a loose kind of belief, much like that of working hypotheses [Link].

From these statements and many others it follows that what is called the Great Void (sunyata) is not really vacant; that is Mahayana doctrine in the matter. Significant Mahayana texts, including the Nirvana Sutra, tell us so.

The Heart Sutra is of Mahayana Buddhism, and is often cited as a most popular Buddhist scripture. Its Sanskrit name is Prajnaparamita Hridaya - the word "sutra" is not present in known Sanskrit manuscripts. The Sanskrit name literally means "The Heart of the Perfection of Transcendent Wisdom".

The sutra belongs to the Perfection of Wisdom group of Mahayana literature, and in English the short version (the following one) is composed of sixteen sentences. A longer versions exists too, and the short version is the core of it, in Chinese.

When? Recent scholarship is unable to verify any date earlier than the 600s CE. Available evidence points towards it being composed in 500s and 600s.

Where? There are differences of opinion among scholars. The scholar Jan Nattier has suggested that the earliest (shortest) version of the Heart Sutra was first assembled or composed in China in the Chinese language based on a Chinese translation of the Large Perfection of Wisdom Sutra along with new composition. Evidence supports a Chinese version at least a century before a Sanskrit version. Her theory is supported among some other prominent scholars of Buddhism, but is not universally accepted. In short: The composition might be assembled or composed in China and is not taken to be the words of Buddha either.

What does the text say? The sutra describes liberation by meditation-won insight, or deep wisdom. The insight refers to "emptiness" by a contradiction that is loosedly rendered into "All is empty - except this statement". To elaborate a little: Leonard Cohen sings: "There a crack in everything", and it follows too that "There's a crack in the statement that there's a crack in everything."

In the light of the foregoing or the heart-felt wisdom, refrain from buying a silly notion of sunyata as emptiness, for it is not true that "Form is empty. Emptiness is form." The ultimate truth is by definition beyond such comprehending . . . but should be experienced directly. It is awakening, and Edward Conze renders the Heart Sutra mantra into English as: "Gone gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all hail!"

The Diamond Sutra belongs to the same class of Mahayana Buddhist literature. [Wikipedia, s.v. "Heart Sutra"]

Who was Sariputra?

"There have been several critical editions of the Sanskrit text of the Heart Sutra, but to date the definitive edition is Conze's, originally published in 1948, and then again in 1967. Conze had access to 12 Nepalese manuscripts; seven mss. [manuscripts] and inscriptions from China; two mss. from Japan; as well as several translations from the Chinese Canon and one from the Tibetan. There is a great deal of variation across the manuscripts in the title, the mangala verses, and within the text itself. Many of the manuscripts are corrupt or simply carelessly copied." [Wikipedia, s.v. "Heart Sutra"]

Avalokita, The Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the
Wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, He beheld but five heaps, and he
saw that in their own-being they were empty.

Here, Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does
not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is
emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions,
impulses and consciousness.

Therefore, Sariputra, in emptiness there is no form, nor feeling, nor perception,
nor impulse, nor consciousness; No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind; No forms, sounds,
smells, tastes, touchables or objects of mind; No sight-organ element, and so forth, until
we come to: No mind-consciousness element; There is no ignorance, no extinction of
ignorance, and so forth, until we come to: there is no decay and death, no extinction of
decay and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path. There is no
cognition, no attainment and non-attainment.

Therefore, Sariputra, it is because of his non-attainmentness that a Bodhisattva,
through having relied on the Perfection of Wisdom, dwells without thought-coverings. In the
absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can
upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana.

Therefore one should know the prajnaparamita as the great spell, the spell of great
knowledge, the utmost spell, the unequalled spell, allayer of all suffering, in truth - for
what could go wrong? By the prajnaparamita has this spell been delivered. It runs like
this: